


Something The Heart Longs For

by afteriwake



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Broken Engagement, Comedy of Errors, Coulson has a crush, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Former Andrew Garner/Melinda May, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Jealous Coulson, Meet the Family, POV Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson & Melinda May Friendship, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Pre-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pre-Series, fake engagement
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 16:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6478000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Melinda calls off her engagement to Andrew on the eve of him having to meet her parents, Coulson steps in to fill the void, all in the name of helping his partner for what turn out to be three of the longest but most rewarding days of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something The Heart Longs For

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CreativeReading](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativeReading/gifts).



> So _obviously_ this is a very AU pre-series Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. fic, inspired by a prompt from my friend **CreativeReading** gave me for a 100 word dabble, asking for a Coulson/May engagement fic. _Obviously_ that sparked a much bigger idea, especially when I ran across a list of fake engagement AUs from **aangisdead** on Tumblr and " _you broke off your engagement with your long-time boyfriend/girlfriend who you were supposed to bring home to meet your family so now you need me to pretend to be them_ " caught my eye. This will be multiple chapters and I hope I won't let it linger _too_ much. Also, keep in mind I've only seen season 1 completely, so if May's parents have been on later seasons I haven't seen them aside from her mother's brief season 1 appearance. The title of a fic comes from a quote from  Golden Fool by Robin Hobb.

“Argh!” 

Coulson looked up, quirking an eyebrow at Melinda. He’d seen her frustrated before, yeah, but never “slam down the phone so hard you crack the receiver” mad before. He knew it wasn’t his place to say anything though, so he simply waited. Eventually, she would give him a sign that she either wanted him to ask what was wrong or that she wanted him to mind his own business and get back to paperwork that had piled up on their month-long mission to Istanbul. Finally she gave him the look that said “go on, I know you want to know.” He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together and putting them behind his head. “How badly did Andrew screw up?”

“He wants to elope,” she said, leaning her head back so it was resting on the back of the chair. “I mean, I told my parents I would bring him home to introduce him so they could see I was engaged to an actual real live man. That there was a real flesh and blood man that had given me this ring, not some figment of my imagination. And my mother would be _furious_ if we ran off to some tacky Elvis fronted wedding chapel and got married without her being there. She could disown me.”

“Would that be so bad?” he ventured hesitantly. Melinda lifted her head up and glared at him. He refused to look cowed. He knew her glare could scare the piss out of any number of men but he refused to be scared or swayed by it. He straightened back up, removing his hands from behind his head and placing them on his desk, looking directly across at her. “Look, May, come on. Between all the ops Fury has us running and the snail’s pace you two are moving at planning this wedding, is it any wonder he’s getting frustrated? Most men would.”

“He knew it when he got involved with me,” she said.

“He didn’t know the whole truth,” Coulson pointed out. “No one can know the whole truth. A sanitized version, yeah, but...”

She looked at him for a moment, keeping direct eye contact and not blinking, and then she sighed and looked away. “It’s a moot point now anyway,” she said with a sigh. “He said if I didn’t want to elope then maybe we should call it off and I said fine so I’m about ninety percent sure I’m not engaged anymore.”

He blinked. To be honest, he hadn’t seen Melinda happier than he had when she was with Andrew, or talking about him, or after they’d gone on a date or had a romantic weekend getaway. She’d been walking on air the first few weeks after he proposed. It had made him kind of sick, to be perfectly frank.

No, that wasn’t true.

He was jealous as hell. Not of her, though. Of Andrew, that he was lucky enough to have the love and affection of Melinda Qiaolian May. Though if he was going to be an idiot and toss it all away just because she wasn’t going to elope with him because he didn’t want to do the proper thing and meet her parents...then maybe he was kind of an idiot.

Not that he’d say that to Melinda’s face, of course.

He didn’t want to get punched.

He ran a hand over his face. “When were you two supposed to go meet your parents?” he asked.

“This weekend. Provided Fury doesn’t stick us with a surprise op, I’m supposed to leave Thursday night and come back late Sunday night and spend the whole time at my parent’s place in Alexandria,” she said, making a slight face. “Guess I have to go spend the weekend there alone now. That’s going to be worse that going three rounds with Garrett.”

He was quiet for a few moments. On the one hand, he had been looking forward to having this break. His social life wasn’t much to speak of; he spent his free time devoted to bettering himself at S.H.I.E.L.D. and tracking down Captain America and WWII memorabilia. He was, for all intents and purposes, boring as hell. He certainly wasn’t flashy or charming, wasn’t anything at all like Andrew Garner. But if nothing else, he was Melinda’s partner. You had your partner’s back however you could. That was the whole point of _being_ partners.

“You could take a different fiancee,” he said quietly.

She raised an eyebrow. “What?” she asked flatly.

“Well, how many details did you give them about Andrew? I mean, your mother is an intelligence operative. Did you give her any information that would allow her to run a background check? A physical description? Photographs? A full name?”

Melinda tilted her head. “I may have been rather sketchy on the details,” she admitted.

“My kind of sketchy or Fury’s kind of sketchy?” Coulson asked, a grin quirking up at the corner of his mouth.

“Beating my mother at her own game kind of sketchy,” she said with a grin. “I may have only given her a fake first name and a vague age.”

“Then we can pull this off,” he said. “We can come up with a cover for me that will impress her, and then stage a spectacular break-up if you think you and Andrew are going to patch things up, and then you can convince him to do right by you and actually meet your parents then you two can have your happily ever after.”

She looked over at him, giving him the wide, warm and genuine smile that she didn’t normally dole out, the one that made his heart skip a beat. He knew it was going to hurt in the end if she and Andrew _did_ work things out, but for the moment, they had a weekend visit with the parents to get through and he’d do whatever it took to get his partner through it. That was what partners...no, that was what _friends_ did, after all. And that was probably all he’d ever get to be with her.

Friends.

Unfortunately.


End file.
